A useful if somewhat naãve assessment of the labyrinthine divorce system. In the early 1990s, Winner, now a private consultant on women's rights and the courts, investigated complaints filed with the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs by women who felt that they had been abused by judges and lawyers in divorce court; many of her recommendations for reform were later adopted by the state. She found rampant overbilling, clear instances of conflict of interest, and repeated failures to disclose information on the part of lawyers, particularly those representing the nonprofessional women least likely to have the resources and sophistication to cope with such conduct. Winner also discovered what she considers to be persistent failure by family court judges to follow the law. The result of this pattern of malfeasance, she argues, is that well-off men find it easy to take advantage of the women they are divorcing. Most of her proposed reforms are debatable, but plausible: reducing judicial discretion, creating citizen review boards to monitor judges and lawyers, applying rules requiring clearer disclosure by lawyers of what they have done to earn their fees, and bringing lawyers under the authority of consumer protection agencies. An outsider to the legal profession, Winner has sharp perceptions of some strange lawyer customs, such as failing to itemize fees and having young associates perform the work for which a high-profile partner has contracted. She also, however, underestimates the degree to which bad judicial and legal practice are caused by sloth or incompetence, rather than avarice or cruelty. She seems shocked that lawyers share the general population's regard for profit, and she ignores the rapaciousness of many clients, including abandoned wives. That said, however, this book has much good advice on protecting oneself from unscrupulous or sloppy lawyers. ($50,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-06-039184-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1996
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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